Transforming Conversations: The Art of Listening and Language with Chuck Wisner

is the author of The Art of Conscious Conversations: Transforming How We Talk, Listen, and Interact. He is a coach and speaker focusing on the lost art of conversations. His theories of the why, how, and what of conversations deeply dive into their DNA and introduce new tools and practices that transform how we can think about and be in them more successfully. He has spent thirty years as a trusted advisor to leaders, their teams, and their families in high-profile companies, including Google, Rivian, Apple, Tesla, DTE Energy, Harvard Business School, Ford, and Chrysler. Before starting Wisner Consulting, Chuck was an architect in Boston, a senior affiliated mediator with the Harvard Mediation Program, certified in Mastering the Art of Professional Coaching, and a coach affiliated with MIT’s Center for Organizational Learning. He lives north of Boston with his wife of 41 years and two sons who are living out their creative dreams in NYC.

 

The Interview Transcript

Hugh Ballou:
Welcome to the Nonprofit Exchange. This is Hugh Ballou, Founder and President of SynerVision Leadership Foundation. Synergy is created by the leader because we have a clear vision. Therefore, SynerVision works with leaders, clarifying messaging, building teams and creating value for everyone. This is the Nonprofit Exchange. This is episode number 424. We’ve been at this a while, but never have we had a guest like we have today. And it’s a brand new acquaintance for me. We just got acquainted a minute ago, but he’s got some wonderful stuff to share today. So Chuck Wisner, welcome to the Nonprofit Exchange. And please tell people a little bit about your background. and your passion for this work. So, our topic today is how to transform your conversation. So, we’ll get to that. But first, tell people about you and your passion for conversations.

Chuck Wisner:
Okay. So, thank you for having me. I’m happy to be here. Part of my doing podcasts and things is promoting my book, The Art of Conscious Conversation. And I came to that through a long long set of experiences. My first work world was music. I was trained as a percussionist and that taught me about working with people and listening and all that jazz. Then I was trained as an architect. And in that business, there was lots of conflict. And during the 15 years I was there, the last few years, one of our partners became an alcoholic and it was a real problem for our clients and our staff. And we architects were good at architecture, but we weren’t good at the other stuff. So we had the people stuff. So we hired in some help and a woman eventually worked with us who, I don’t know, she worked with him individually. She met with us as a group. She gave us feedback. She did these things and started these conversations with us. And in the end, We all had a way through the solution. We all were happy about it. It wasn’t easy, but it was a transformation. And when we were finished, I was like, what just happened? What Linda did felt like magic to me. And because She made me think differently. She made us as a group work differently. And she gave us tools to come with new solutions. So it felt like magic. And I think what she did also spoke to my, I have an innate interest in philosophy and psychology and theology and spirituality. So I think what she did seem like, wait a minute, she put some pieces together that I never put together. And make a long story short, I was so intrigued that I started studying and I did four years of retooling and restudying myself. And I studied the ontology of language. I did mediation. I worked with a transformational leadership program at MIT, teaching it or coaching it. And four years later, I gave up my architecture partnership and changed careers. So now I’m through my book and my talks I’m trying to give people a window into the power of language and the power of conversations so that we can hear them and listen to them and speak them differently, which means we can better collaborate and create with other people.

Hugh Ballou:
We just met, but we have an unusual amount of overlap in our experience, our skillset, our interests, and our disciplines. My principle form of leadership I teach is transformational leadership, which is as a musician, you know, we build cultures of people that function at a higher level. And so transformation, our motto at Center Vision is transforming leaders, transforming organizations, transforming lives. And what we do is provide resources and talking to people that have been there, do that, have specialized skills. And I can’t think of a more important skill, and of course, being musicians, we’re taught this, is listening. And that’s probably, you know, of all the leadership skills, that’s probably one of the most underutilized. What’s your take on that?

Chuck Wisner:
Yeah, so listening, there’s a lot of books out there about listening. You know, mirror the other person, repeat what they say, etc. But my take on this is that part of the reason we can’t listen is because we are so generally wrapped up in our own chatter. our own monkey mind, that is, or whatever you want to call it, the committee inside, that’s going on without a lot of awareness or practicing on our part to sort of manage that. And so instead of listening, we’re always running our dialogue, like, what are we going to say next? Or how do I disagree or agree? Or worried about how we’ll look or how we’ll sound So that inner chatter is really a distraction from allowing us to be fully present and absorb different perspectives or absorb other opinions without our judgment sort of shutting it down immediately. So I say, until we do our own work, investigating our own stories, investigating our own judgments, we can read all the books we want, but we have to do our own work before we can actually make that transformation.

Hugh Ballou:
Well, they can read the others, but they need to read yours in addition to that. That’s well, that’s very well put. One of the, you know, 40 years I was an active conductor and I still do some now and then, but transitioning to being a keynote speaker, you know, it’s a lot easier to speak than it is to conduct. Yeah, yeah. Uniquely enough, that’s the number one fear that people have year after year. The number one fear of public speaking and the number two is death. But, you know, we have misconceptions of things. So public speaking is really a position of influence where you’re sharing ideas and concepts. So as a leader, we need to master some of these skills of presenting, but on the other side of that, we also need to master listening. So, tell us about, before I go there, I want you to tell us a little bit about your book and what are some of the parts of it that will be important to us. But one of the important aha moments was when I was years ago studying corporate coaching, you know, leadership coaching. And one of the disciplines was you teach people, you listen to what the person has to say, and then you leave three seconds of silence. So as you were referring to, people have their own dialogue going on. And when you’re speaking to somebody and you’re looking in their eyes, you know if they’re listening or not. And so I don’t want to be guilty. I want to model. And then if you look him in the eye and you listen and you give that pause, that’s an affirmation that you’ve heard it, but it also gives you a chance to make sure you’ve heard it and processed it. There’s a delay time there. So there’s different kinds of listening. I would say that’s more of a, in my world, an active listening. Do you have different ways people listen? Any advice there?

Chuck Wisner:
Well, I think that one of the key elements is when we do our own work around our judgments and negativity, because our inner world, our inner dialogue is quite negative. And so until we unwrap it, unwind it, it has a pretty big impact on how we show up in the world. But I think getting rid of sort of the nonjudgmental piece of learning to listen without the judgment, because every buddy’s opinion that comes at us, our brain is very fast at just going, oh, okay, here’s where those dots connect, and this is why I disagree, and this is why this guy’s full of crap. And that judgment stuff is running. So when we start looking at that, and I literally have exercises in the book where we can write them down and take a look, and process them so we find the good in them instead of the bad in them. So that non-judgmental piece is hard work, but it really is fundamental to sort of opening our minds and our hearts so we can hear.

Hugh Ballou:
That’s so key, because we all have biases, and I am biased towards certain people, and it’s hard just to let that go and listen with an unbiased ear, because you know, there’s something to learn from everybody. Do you have a copy of your book there?

Chuck Wisner:
I don’t, I do not, I’m not in my office.

Hugh Ballou:
But I will, let me just share real quick. There’s a copy on your website we’ll go to later. So here’s what it looks like, folks. If you’re listening to the podcast, there’s a link on the podcast platform, but it’s the art of conscious conversations transforming how we talk, listen, and interact. So inside the book, give us some hints of what are some of the useful things inside the book.

Chuck Wisner:
Well, so the way the book is organized is through four types of conversations. So four archetypal types of conversation. And that’s very purposeful because one of my goals around the book was to help people not be in language blindly, but to be in conversation and language with more awareness. And what that means is we have to understand conversations in a new way that we were never taught. So I often say we’re like fish in water, we’re humans in conversation, but actually we’re never taught the fundamentals. So I break all these different aspects of conversations down into four types. One is storytelling. And the world is made of stories. We have our own stories. We tell other people’s stories. Culture and societies exist because of the stories we agree on. Money is a story. Law is a story. And so that’s so fundamental because personally, we have stories that help us be in the world, but they also can hinder us. So storytelling is a primary conversation, and it’s first in the book for that reason, that until we do that bit of work, going to the next conversation, which is the collaborative conversation, which is our ability to advocate and inquire, our ability to listen better, our ability to collaborate and absorb perspectives different than ours. When we do our own work in storytelling, then we’re much more ready to do collaboration. And the art of collaboration is really the dance advocating, inquiring in an open way, not in a closed way. We’re all trained to be pretty good, bad advocates and bad inquirers. We advocate to win our position or we advocate because we think we have the right answer. So that’s about being a learner instead of a knower. That’s about knowing that you can learn from others. And then if we do that conversation well, the next conversation is creative conversation. And imagine the more you and I collaborate on a project or an idea or a theory, we’re thinking differently, but we’re really absorbing each other and going back and forth. And what about this? And what about that? What happens is our minds and our hearts are opening up and eventually ideas bubble up, creativity bubbles up. And it’s that space when we’re more open that ideas can come forth and you and I might come up with an idea that individually wouldn’t have thought of at all together, individually, right? So it’s that spark, that moment. The other piece of that creative conversation is learning to trust our intuition, you know, that we were so trained to be left brain, rational, linear thinkers for our business and our work, that learning to, and music plays a part here, learning to listen to our intuition, like what feels right? What’s my gut telling me? What’s my heart telling me? And to learn to trust some of those things. So there’s some work there we can do. And then the final part of the book is on commitment conversations. And that’s because once we do the storytelling and collaboration and creativity, the commitment conversation is the action conversation. It’s how we coordinate things with other people. And it’s a huge piece of our everyday life, whether it’s me and my wife and the dishes and the trash, or whether it’s me at a meeting and we’re trying to decide a strategy and get a team to commit to what’s next for the next year. We make promises all the time. But because we don’t understand how that works, we actually do that conversation pretty poorly. We make promises we shouldn’t make. We make quick decisions that aren’t vetted. So that conversation really breaks down the nitty gritty of the action and that notion of making promises so we can build trust. So that’s a really quick hit on the organization of the book and the parts.

Hugh Ballou:
As people are listening, and you can’t write this down, do not fret. There is a transcript that will be on the website. So, if you have the podcast, it’ll lead you to the website, but I’m going to give it to you now. It’s The Nonprofit Exchange, THE. nonprofitexchange.org. You go there, you’ll find all these episodes with the latest one being on the top. And what you’ll do is look for the title about conversations. And there are many sound bites you’ve given us with useful things to think about. And for me, those could be a paradigm shift. We’re in a culture, you may have noticed, we’re in a culture where people disagree, and it’s important to disagree, and it’s important to be right. And there’s a better way to do this, and what you’re bringing us is a better way to think about having conversations with people, because we’ve lost that art, haven’t we?

Chuck Wisner:
We have, and yeah, and one way I like to think about it is that because we’re not taught the DNA or the ABCs of conversations early in our education, we learn conversations through our families and our culture and our churches and our institutions, right? We aren’t taught the fundamentals, right? And without the fundamentals, how do we change them? sort of understand some new ways of thinking, that then we go, oh my gosh, I didn’t realize that the way I’m thinking had me showing up this way. And so it’s that self-reflective piece that then transforms into the conversations with other people. I’m not sure I answered your question.

Hugh Ballou:
No, it’s just throwing some ideas out. It’s just you’re giving us a lot of things to think about. And then to me, a journey through a book like yours is discovery. And I find that when I go through a book like this, there’s some tactical things that I can realize and I can understand and I can outline them, underline them, highlight them, whichever with yellow. And then another year when I’m going back and review it, I’ll use blue. And I’ll find that I’ll highlight different things because I’ll be looking for different things because I’ve digested that first set of things. But what you’re bringing to my awareness is there’s many, many facets in what you originally said. And it’s true of leadership, transformational leadership. The transformation happens with yourself first.

Chuck Wisner:
Right, right. Yeah. And if we do that work, the analogy I like is like, we not only become more aware of the power of language and the power of our words, especially for leaders, because I tell leaders, you know, your word is the power of 10. You think you’re putting an opinion out there, but everyone listening that reports to you is hearing like, I’m going to get fired tomorrow, you know, right? And so the power of 10. So that notion of being aware of the power of words, we then can transform how we’re thinking, but also how we show up. And self-reflection is crucial because what we only, not only learn about language, we become more emotionally intelligent. So I think of it like growing antennas. So the more emotionally intelligent I am, or you are, which means in tune with my intuition, in tune with my emotions, the stories under my emotions, the more I can read other people’s. And so the more I can listen with that emotional awareness, the more I can listen with empathy, the more I can listen with compassion, because we’ve been there. We’ve been there, we’ve done that.

Hugh Ballou:
And there’s certain cultural standards that impact this, too. Now, I served the church for 40 years, and people are nice. You know, how are you? Fine. And they have a meeting, and everybody’s agreeable, until you get to the parking lot. I didn’t agree with him. And so we… we don’t think we can speak, like Paul said, speak the truth in love. And so, there’s a shift, especially in the South, especially in the, you know, the kind church culture. But, you know, I’m also trained as a meeting facilitator, and when I get in a group, I ask them to put conflict in one hand. I said, that’s a weapon. Now, let’s flip it over to be a creative tool. And they have, it’s a good, we have a good time disagreeing, because we’re We’re attacking the facts. We’re not attacking each other. So there’s this culture, and you talked about having to agree, having a position. Is that really important, or is it more important to learn about your topic?

Chuck Wisner:
Well, I think that when we want to change a conversation from conflict, right? One thing we don’t do is understand that there’s power in discovering what we agree on. And what we agree on is always going to be some fundamental facts, right? He said, she said, the chandelier fell down, the church pew, you know, whatever, you know, but there’s some fundamental facts, right? And that’s really solid ground to change the dynamics of a conversation, as well as what else can we agree on? Can we agree on a principle of what our goal is to solve this problem we’re talking about or solve this conflict that we’re stuck in? Can we agree on a few things? And actually, this comes out of a very interesting program that we’ve done in Sweden called The Natural Step, where scientists saw all these factions around climate change. And instead of them banging their heads, he spent years interviewing them. And they actually came up with four, no, five, I think, fundamental principles that they all agreed on, no matter where they stood on the climate change initiative. Four principles. And this was very successful. It was very much supported by the King of Sweden. And it transformed Volvo, IKEA, even McDonald’s. It changed some of the ways that they were producing their, their product. So I mentioned that because that’s that notion of can we agree on some facts and can we agree on principles and that’s a foundation for a conversation that without it we just go at it and add it and add it and add it we’re like this all the time.

Hugh Ballou:
And I’ll bet you there’s probably in most cultures there’s more we agree on than what we disagree on.

Chuck Wisner:
Right yeah exactly yeah yeah.

Hugh Ballou:
I’ve been doing this 35 years and I find that to be always true. And people never think about, what do we agree on? Okay, that’s a basis for a relationship. And then you go to another level. We’re running close to the end of this, but it’s important. I need to get this book and read it backwards and forwards. But being a musician, there’s different I play piano, I push down middle C, it’s middle C. A clarinet plays middle C, it sounds a B flat. French horn plays middle C, it’s an F. So there’s people that respond differently than we expect. They transpose. So there’s a, you know, we have to learn to listen differently to different kinds of people, how they interpret it. How do we make sure we’re on the same page with the messaging?

Chuck Wisner:
That’s a good question, a long conversation, but I wanna drop in here another fundamental part of the book that are these four archetypal elements of every conversation or four archetypal elements of every opinion we have. And there are, so take a strong opinion you have, right? And to deconstruct it, to understand it and take the judgment out and find the gold in it, you ask four questions. What is my desire? And if you and I were doing this around the conflict, what are our desires? We have different desires, the same desires. Can we find a shared desire? Because desires are a beautiful thing until they’re not. Because many desires that get us in trouble are the desires that are not aligned with reality. We want something to happen, but reality is showing us a different truth. And so that’s a trap for desires. But to know what they are is a good thing. The second is concern. What am I concerned about? judging this because I’m worried about tomorrow. I don’t want next week to look like this week. The third is authority. Every judgment we have, every opinion we have, every conversation we’re in, there’s power issues. Whose voice do I give more power to? Who’s leading the room? Who’s taking over the room? There’s power issues with our friends. There’s power issues with our siblings, our parents, our partners. And the last one is standards. Every judgment we have, is based on a standard that I would bet anything, 80%, 90% of them, you didn’t choose consciously. You learned it from your culture, you learned it from your family. And so those four things are a deconstruct, it’s a very short thing. Put those four things on a little sticky pad, and every time you’re stuck in a conflict, go ask yourself those four questions. I go into depth about that in the book, yeah.

Hugh Ballou:
That’s self awareness. Let’s go back to the book again. Here’s your website, and for people that are listening, I need to move this out of my way. It’s your name, Chuck, C-H-U-C-K Wisner, W-I-S-N-E-R.com, chuckwisner.com, no dots, no spaces. So it takes you to your business website, your new book, and guess what? Down here, you can download the introduction. Put your email in there. Now, people say, I’m going to be on your email, let’s go and do that. But they can unsubscribe if they don’t want to get more, right?

Chuck Wisner:
And believe me, I don’t, I don’t, I, I, unless people reach out to me with a question or wanted to talk to me, I don’t, I don’t pepper people with lots of, lots of promotion. I just don’t do that.

Hugh Ballou:
Great. I just want to alleviate some fears, encourage people to go ahead and get that introduction. What else will they find on your website when they go there?

Chuck Wisner:
Well, I’ve written a bunch of articles about leadership and about communication in Forbes and other good publications. So they can read those articles as a sort of a backup of the book. And then there’s also a little bit about what I do with leaderships and teams and a little bit why I think speaking about these things are so important.

Hugh Ballou:
So, some background. Yep, there you are, good. And then there’s a tab for the book, especially. It’s on the homepage. Very nice looking website. People can navigate it easily and they can find what they need. So, get that introduction of the book. You have a target audience, but I would say that anybody that’s doing any kind of work with people needs your book.

Chuck Wisner:
Yeah, that was a problem for me and the publishers and the agents. But narrow down your target audience. And then, OK, I can, but everybody could use this.

Hugh Ballou:
Yeah, so our audience, non-profit leaders, and you know, we have a variety of people we deal with. So it’s important that we hone in our listening skills. So for any non-profit leaders, it’s a hard job. We tend to make it harder than it is. So why not get a leg up and learn how to build, and you might consider yourself a good communicator, great. Then you can learn more from the book because you’re already up a step. So we never reach a plateau. I remember Jim Rohn, he says, always work on your business harder than yourself, harder than you work on your business. And of course, nonprofit is a tax exempt business. So Chuck, this is a life, it’s a lifelong journey. It is, and you and I know that because we’ve been at it for a while. This is just an introduction to the wealth in this book, and I’m glad you’ve been here today to share this, and people can read the articles and learn more on your website, and then they can get the book, and then it’s an important part of a leader’s library. So what do you want to leave people with today? A thought or a challenge or a tip? What do you want to leave people with as a closing comment?

Chuck Wisner:
You know, throughout the book, in the end, I think we are so addicted to having answers because we’re rewarded for being the smartest one in the room. I think all of us can lean back and just say, let me fall in love with questions. let me fall in love with good questions so that I can better understand an opposing view or good questions that help us sort of mutually learn from each other. And I think we don’t do that very well because our ego gets in the way. So being humble enough to say, I have an opinion, but instead of holding your opinion like a fist, you hold it with an open hand and you say, let me understand how you’re thinking. Let me understand your concerns. Let me understand your standards. And so that notion of just falling in love with questions is what I would give them as a parting message.

Hugh Ballou:
That is golden. And that, you know, there was 30 minutes of really helpful tips. And, you know, that’s as much as I can absorb at once. So 30 minutes, we could talk on this topic for days, but you’ve given us a really good overview, some good tips, some good sound bites, and good reason to go check out your website, chuckwisner.com. Chuck, you’ve been a gift to me today and our audience. Thank you for being my guest.

Chuck Wisner:
Thank you for having me.